Scenarios of Potential Risks Evolution through Algorithms and Data in Sciences – SPREADS

The project has three phases:
- The first stage is analytical and descriptive, and aims to map the opportunities for attacking science, particularly when it is based on digital methods, based on the field survey carried out at the Institut Pasteur (partner 2).
- The second stage is speculative and forward-looking, with the aim of imagining, firstly, the ways in which these opportunities for attack could be exploited and their general repercussions (total cognitive warfare), and then, symmetrically but independently at first, the countermeasures to guard against them, as well as the effect of their generalisation, based on the research fieldwork at the INSTN CEA Paris-Saclay (partner 3).
- The third stage is reflexive and generative, seeking to establish - on the basis of a comparison of the attack and defence scenarios - an assessment of the dynamics unleashed and to develop a framework for exploring different similar dynamics in the form of a playful generative device.

In addition to the scenarios resulting from the study at the Institut Pasteur and the countermeasures designed at INSTN-CEA, SPREADS aims to produce a generative fictional device that can give rise to multiple divergent explorations based on various forms of chance (drawing lots, randomisation, improvisation, etc.), to enable its users to appropriate the emerging dynamics of total cognitive warfare situations by incorporating the encounter with the unknown. It is not possible to describe in advance the final form that this device will take (illustrated book in which you are the hero, war game, interactive play, role-playing game, etc.) but the final deliverable is intended for different audiences: strategy schools, public exhibitions, etc.

Commercial exploitation of the final product is not ruled out, if a partnership is found based on the Creative Commons licence, which is the preferred status for the project's deliverables.

Scientific articles will be produced and a scientific festival will be organised at the Institut Pasteur.

SPREADS is a prospective study of the consequences of technological disruptions affecting strategic knowledge management in the era of platforms and massive infectable databases. From the perspective of cognitive wars, it explores the hypothesis of a radical sabotage of the foundations of cognition through the corruption of scientific knowledge. The vulnerability of research results increases as algorithms become more and more important in research procedures. The complexity and opacity of artificial intelligences make it possible to bias their learning by hacking into the data. SPREADS addresses this issue through the design of speculative fictions from the perspective of adversarial design (staging of measures and countermeasures). In particular, we will consider the scenario of a total cognitive war where antagonistic powers simultaneously resort to the dissemination of infectious fictions and the secrecy of scientific research.